“You all know what Joshua wants,” Caroline said softly now. “He knows it’s coming too. As soon as he returns, he wants a family meeting to try and persuade us all to move to St. Louis.”
“That’s why I wanted to talk about it now,” Nathan answered gravely. “In a way, I’m glad that he had to take Alice back. It will give us time to think about how we’re going to deal with this.”
“But how can we not go?” Matthew exclaimed.
“That’s just it,” Caroline responded. “What Joshua still doesn’t understand is that this isn’t just following after Brigham Young, or Heber C. Kimball. This is answering the call of the Lord. And unfortunately, the Lord isn’t asking us to go to St. Louis.” Now the tears spilled over and started down her cheeks. “Do you think Will and Alice will hesitate to go?”
Matthew shook his head. “Not one minute.”
She bit her lip. “I know.”
“What can we do, Papa?” Nathan turned to his daughter. To his surprise, Emily was crying now too. “We can’t leave Aunt Caroline. Or Aunt Melissa. We can’t just leave them.”
Lydia was watching Caroline closely. “What
will
you do?” she asked, feeling her sister-in-law’s pain.
Caroline’s head dropped and she looked at the ground. “I don’t know. He’ll never go west. And then what’s my choice? Follow the Lord or stay with my husband?”
Nathan put an arm around his daughter and pulled her against his shoulder. “I’d like to try and answer Emily’s question.” He blew out his breath, wanting so much to be able to say this right. “In the scriptures, we are often taught that there are times when our prayers need to be combined with fasting, that there are certain problems of such difficulty, such magnitude, that a special effort is needed to get an answer.”
“Like getting Lydia McBride to join the Church,” Lydia half whispered. “If it hadn’t been for Nathan’s fasting, I wouldn’t be here.”
“That’s how Mama finally got Papa to sell the farm and go to Ohio,” Rebecca spoke up. “Remember?”
“Yes,” Nathan exclaimed, “that’s exactly what I’m talking about. I think that what we have here is a problem of great magnitude. We know the Lord won’t force anyone to be what they don’t want to be. But we also know that he can soften hearts, change feelings. Isn’t the greatest miracle of all the changing of the human heart? Isn’t that worth whatever effort it takes on our part to see if that will happen?”
“A family fast for Joshua?” Matthew asked.
“No, a family fast for our family,” Nathan corrected him. “I am proposing that we start a fast tonight for Alice and Will. And then I am suggesting that after that, once a week, we have a fast for our family, that we fast and pray that we can stay together, that somehow the Lord will help us work out this impossible situation.” He paused, his voice filled with emotion. “That’s what I am suggesting.”
Walter Samuelson slammed his fist against the tabletop, accidentally hitting the corner of his ashtray. Cigar butts and ashes went flying across the glass top. He swore bitterly, then looked at Will. “No! Absolutely not. I will not give my permission for you to marry Alice, and I will not allow her to become a Mormon. That is final. Discussion over, Will!”
“But, Mr. Samuelson, I—”
“I said no!” he roared. “Do you hear me, Will? No!”
Will was calm. He did not flinch under the barrage of words nor the heat of Samuelson’s anger. “Sir, begging your pardon, but Alice is eighteen years of age. She will be nineteen in December. She was hoping for your blessing. She does not need your permission.”
“Will!” Joshua cut in sharply as Samuelson turned a bright red and looked as if he would choke. “That’s enough.”
With that same calm equanimity, Will looked at Joshua. “I’m sorry, Father, but I’m not going to pretend that Walter’s opposition is going to change things when it’s not. Alice and I plan to marry. If we cannot get his permission, we shall do without his blessing as well.”
And with that, he turned around and walked out of the office, ignoring the spluttering sounds coming from behind him.
Samuelson swore again. Joshua shook his head. So much for all of his carefully rehearsed dialogues on the way down here. “Walter,” he began.
His partner didn’t look up, just waved him off.
“Walter, look, we need to talk about this.”
His head shot up. “No, Joshua,
we
don’t need to talk. You and Will need to talk. I’ve said my last word on this. If you want to do some good, you go talk to your son.”
He caught up with Will just outside the main door of the warehouse. To Joshua’s surprise, Will had not turned up the street toward Alice’s house, but down the street, toward the river. Joshua ran quickly to catch up, and then fell in step beside him. Will glanced at him but said nothing.
They walked along in silence for better than five minutes, down to the great river with its long wharves, its chugging riverboats, and warehouse after warehouse filled with huge stacks of cotton, bales of wool, mountains of lumber, sweet-smelling spices from the Orient, and a hundred other samplings of the commerce of the world. Finally, at one of the piers Will slowed his step. There was no riverboat docked there at present, so he stepped over the chain that kept the wagons and carriages out and walked out to the end of the dock. He sat down, his legs dangling over the edge, staring down at the swirling waters below them. Joshua sat down beside him and leaned back on his hands.
For almost another full minute they didn’t speak; then Joshua cleared his throat. Will turned his head and looked at him fully, as if this was no more than what he had expected.
“Will you listen to me for a minute or two without getting angry?” Joshua asked.
Will shrugged easily. “I’m not at all angry, Pa. Not at you. Not at Alice’s father.”
“Will, taking that kind of stance isn’t going to help.”
“What kind of stance is that, Pa?”
“Saying that you and Alice are going to do what you want to do no matter what Walter says. It will only make him dig in his heels all the deeper.”
“And what do you think I should say to him?”
“I—” He stopped for a minute. “I don’t know. But being so confrontational isn’t helping your cause at all.”
“I didn’t think I was pleading
my
cause, Pa.”
“Well, it’s certainly not going to help Alice.”
“I wasn’t pleading Alice’s cause either.”
“Then just what were you doing? Being stubborn?” And then to take the bite out of his words, he smiled. “Like your father?”
“I was trying to help Walter see what
his
best alternative is.”
Joshua couldn’t help but laugh. “You what?”
“That’s right. There are only two alternatives here. He can give his permission, even if he doesn’t approve, and make the best of the situation. If that’s the case, Alice will be baptized, we’ll be married. Oh, there will be a little strain, but at least the family will stay together.” Will shrugged again, still quite untroubled. “Or he can utterly refuse, fight us at every step. Alice will still be baptized, we will still be married, and the family will be torn apart. So isn’t the first the better alternative?”
Joshua just stared at him, remembering Will’s unbendable determination to be baptized and the conflict it had generated between them.
“I know what he’s thinking,” Will went on. “He’s thinking that if he is angry enough and threatens to throw her out, it will change her mind. But it won’t, Pa. I am telling you, she knows what she wants to do, and even if it comes to the other, she is not going to change her mind. So, the sooner Walter comes to accept that, the better choice he will be able to make.”
“And you think it’s that simple?” Joshua asked in amazement, not hiding his irritation.
Will half turned, looking behind them to where a small slab of board was nailed above the entrance to the wharf. He nodded toward it. “Do you know why I came here, Pa?”
Joshua looked around, not sure what Will was looking at. “No. Why?”
“This is pier number seventeen.”
“So?”
“That sign there was the only thing I could see from the coal bin they locked me in,” he said softly. “Pier number seventeen.”
“Coal bin? Locked you—” And then understanding came. It had been here in St. Louis that Will had been kidnapped and sold to a riverboat captain, who then took him to New Orleans and sold him off to a packet ship captain. He slowly nodded.
“It was not a wonderful time, Pa. I thought you were dead. I had stolen money from Mama in Savannah, then run away, with her not knowing where I was. I had a broken wrist. I had just seen two men gunned down and killed because of my stupidity.” He laughed in soft self-mockery. “I was fourteen and I was going to solve everything.”
“You were trying to make things right, Will.”
“I was a fool, Pa. Why I’m not dead, I don’t know. I was very nearly killed.”
“I know.”
“After Charlie dragged me down here and sold me to the boat captain, they locked me in the coal bin. The only light I had was from one small crack in the outside wall. In the morning, before we left St. Louis, I peeked out of that crack. The only thing I could see was that sign there. Pier number seventeen.” He looked at his father now. “It wasn’t much, but it was all I had. I knew I was still in St. Louis, and for a few hours it gave me hope.”
Joshua said nothing. Will had told him about that terrible time when he had come back to Missouri seeking to avenge what he thought was his father’s death, but he had never before shared these details.
“You know what, Pa? For a long time, especially after I was sold to that sea captain, I was terribly bitter. Life had dealt with me in some pretty awful ways. I fought back. I tried to run away. Nothing worked. It only made things worse for me.”
“I can’t believe that you came through it as well as you did.”
“Do you know why I did?”
“No.”
“Because one day I realized that reality was reality. I was on a sailing ship in the Caribbean. My family thought I was dead. There was no way to escape. Whether I liked it or not, that was reality. When I finally realized that, and accepted it, that’s when things began to turn around.”
“Hmm.” Joshua was looking at his son with new respect and admiration, starting now to understand what he had been saying previously.
“It’s pier seventeen all over again, Pa. Walter can either accept reality and make the best of it, or he can not accept reality and make the worst of it. That’s what he needs to see, Pa. That’s what you need to help him understand. That’s why I said that I’m not trying to plead my cause, or Alice’s cause. It’s
his
cause. It is the best for him and for his wife.”
Joshua gave his son a long, appraising look, then slowly nodded. He had not fully believed it until now, but now he saw it clearly. And Will was right. That didn’t mean he agreed with him, but he could see he was right.
Will had a sudden thought. “Pa, suppose this were a business venture and not a family matter. Then what would you say to him?”
Joshua leaned back, remembering that first day in Savannah when he had stepped off the boat and been greeted by a cocky, swaggering twelve-year-old who offered guide services to the city. He shook his head. What a pivotal meeting that had turned out to be! He came back to the present. “A business deal? I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Suppose you and Walter were talking about a business deal here and not a family matter. Let’s say that you have a failing business. You don’t like it; in fact, you desperately do not want it to fail. But you have tried everything. Nothing works. The reality is, it’s going to fail. What would you tell him to do?”
Joshua’s mouth opened and then shut again as he thought about that. It took him only a second or two to know the answer. “I would tell him to cut his losses.”
“Meaning?”
“If you really can’t turn it around, then throwing more money at it is not the answer. So you cut your losses. You get out before you lose any more. You stop throwing good money after bad.”
“In other words,” Will said softly, “once you accept reality, you try to make the best of it.”
“Yes.” Joshua sighed. “It’s very hard, though. Especially if you have a huge investment in it. It’s hard to finally say, there’s nothing more we can do.”
“That’s Walter’s problem, Pa. I know he and Judith have a huge investment in Alice, but they’re going to throw it all away if they’re not careful. Somehow, he’s got to see that.”
For a long time, Joshua was silent.
“You don’t know this,” Will said, bringing him back to the present, “but I come down here almost every time we are in St. Louis.”
“You do?”
“Yes. It reminds me of some important things about life, about myself. And I always end up saying a prayer before I leave, thanking my Heavenly Father for taking a foolish, immature fourteen-year-old and watching over him until he could grow up a little.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me all this?”
“It wasn’t the right time.”
“And now it is?”
Will nodded slowly. “I hope so.”
Joshua stood up. He stared across the river to the Illinois side, thinking paradoxically of Nauvoo and home. He was filled with a sudden longing to be there, to talk to Caroline about the remarkable young man she had raised. Will got to his feet and came to stand beside him.
“I don’t think right now is a good time,” Joshua said.
“A good time for what?”
“For trying to talk to Walter.”
Will smiled sadly. “Probably not.”
“But we will tonight.”
“We?” Will said in surprise. “I don’t think that is a good idea. Really.”
After a pause, Joshua’s head bobbed up and down once. “Perhaps you’re right.” He took a breath. “All right, Will. I’m not making any promises, but I’ll talk to him. To them. I think Judith needs to hear this too.”
“I agree. Thank you, Father.”
They started back up the wharf, toward the street. As they stepped over the chain, Joshua turned and looked back. “How big was the coal bin?” he asked.
Surprised, Will thought for a moment. “Oh, maybe five feet by ten feet. Why?”
“I was just wondering. Normally, the best schoolrooms are larger than that.”